Marianna’s Beauty Salon

Marianna’s Beauty Salon

“Bushra’s stories of runaway desi girls leaving Queens and hitchhiking the country, queer brown love and heartbreak, are as necessary to me as water. Her writing narrates the inner and outer lives of immigrant desi communities with fierce, delicate beauty, remembering the Halal butchers, the illegal Zeenat Aman tapes for sale and always, the women other writers forget or never see in the first place. Rehman’s poems are prayers of remembrance shot with lyrical power.” — Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Consensual Genocide

“To all the girls of color who think poetry is a white thing: Buy Bushra’s book now! You’ll find — like I did — that Bushra’s poetry is about us and our lives in the city and our mother’s dreams and our longing for love. Her poems will make you laugh and they’ll make you want to call home and cry. When Audre Lorde said poetry isn’t a luxury, she surely had Bushra’s work in mind. You’ll wish you could download these verses to your computer and burn a CD for every woman out there.” — Daisy Hernandez

“Bushra is a little bundle of magic. Her poetry transports you from the dreary world into a colorful, surreal, emotional, and heartfelt place — she makes you wish you were home, and home is wherever she is. She can talk story you all the way from Corona to Pakistan with her insight, humor, and wisdom — and you’ll be grateful the ride.” — Ishle Yi Park

“Bushra’s a riot. She’ll make you pee in your pants.” — Samira Qureshi

Corona Press Kit

Corona Soundtrack

Check out the playlist behind Corona. Curated by Bushra Rehman.
"Bushra Rehman on
CORONA (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013)
CORONA is filled with music, whether it’s references to specific artists (I tortured my fellow passengers on a road trip by bringing mix CDs that only contained Tom Waits) or entire underground music scenes (I fell hard for a Bengali mathematician I met at Basement Bhangra). The songs in this playlist are either mentioned in Bushra’s book or approximate markers of the time period the stories took place. If CORONA was ever made into a movie and Bushra had a gazillion dollar budget, this might be the soundtrack."
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